Saturday, September 12, 2015

Tomato Blight v Grafted Tomatoes

In the spring I planted 2 grafted Cherokee Purple tomato plants in hopes that they would be resistant to late blight as advertised. Well, they did great at first. I had ripe tomatoes earlier than ever, mid July. But I think that was purely due to the fact that they were started earlier and were growing in bigger pots, hence a larger root system.
When late blight hit, it hit the grafted tomatoes the same, and maybe a little worse, than the Amish Paste tomato plants.

The Amish Paste tomatoes have been giving me a huge harvest of tomatoes despite the blight while the grafted tomatoes have given up. This was one experiment that I think was a failure. But I might be tempted to start some tomatoes super early and keep moving them into bigger and bigger pots. I like having tomatoes in July.

2 comments:

I'm very glad for this update because I was very curious about the grafted tomato claims. I think my Amish Paste have always been the worst for blight, but I love their flavor. I tried some different varieties this year, but blight still took over. Seems there's no way to get rid of it once it's in the soil.